


who turns on the wheel

by benelelax



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Gen, Mama Cooper - Freeform, Part 8, WonderfulxStrange 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:35:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26261257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/benelelax/pseuds/benelelax
Summary: She startled awake, in that disorienting way that felt like falling. The window was still dark, morning apparently far off. There was a rotten kind of taste in her mouth. Takes place shortly after Part 8.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 3





	who turns on the wheel

**Author's Note:**

> this one is my wonderfulxstrange submission for mindblownie! A take on what occurs after the events of Part 8 when the girl (who I have chosen to interpret being mama cooper) wakes up. I had fun coming up with the imagery I use in this so hopefully it fits! The title comes from "The sun warms everything" a perhaps inappropriately hopeful section of Carmina Burana.

She startled awake, in that disorienting way that felt like falling. The window was still dark, morning apparently far off. There was a rotten kind of taste in her mouth. _I forgot to brush my teeth,_ she remembered, running her tongue over her teeth, tasting more of that chalky taste. Indeed she’d forgotten to do anything before falling asleep. Even her shoes were still on. After seeing Miguel, she had thought she’d be too excited to sleep at all. 

Shaking off some of the sleeping fogginess, she took some notice of the sounds in her room. First was the radio, playing static. She twisted the knob tiredly, but felt immediately more alert when the noise was gone. 

The second sound was a light, gentle chiming. It took her longer to place where it was coming from. Moments passed while she listened adrift, before recognizing the pretty peals of a porcelain music box kept on the lowest of a set of shelves at the far wall. She darted over to the shelf, crouched down to look at the thing closely. 

The music box was not a box per say, but a little white carousel that spun around in time with its song. There was a little white horse affixed to the pole of the carousel, a tiny painted thing with a little leaf-green saddle. It had small, grubby marks on it from where she’d touched it as a child, enchanted with the delicateness of the device. Now the thing only seemed strange, spinning on the lonely shelf while the music played slowly, slowly. The carousel had been a gift from her grandmother, many years ago. She hadn’t touched it in some time. _Who wound it?_ No answers were forthcoming. 

She watched it carefully while the chimes petered out, and the carousel stopped spinning. It took longer than she’d imagined-- an unnerving prospect while she tried to piece together who had wound it and when. She lifted up the carousel, turning it over to see where the little winding key stuck out of the bottom. It had a strange smudge of inky residue on it. The smell wrinkled her nose when she detected it, and reminded her of the smell of a busy highway in the sun. The discovery raised her curiosities ever more, but she heard footsteps down on the landing. Her mother. _Was she the one who wound the key?_ She placed the carousel back on the shelf, slipped her shoes off, and opened her bedroom door as quietly as she could. 

The footsteps proceeded down the stairs, she would have been frightened if she hadn’t been so certain they belonged to her mother. The sound was hard to distinguish, but she had never been wrong about these things before. Her Father called it her _intuition_.

Making her way down the hall, she paused at the bathroom door, nearly went in to brush her teeth before moving on. She blinked. The taste seemed to have mostly gone away already. She had the peculiar thought that it had sunk in deeper, or gone further down her throat where she couldn’t detect it anymore. Thinking of this brought on the urge to cough, but she held it back until her eyes watered. She didn’t want to wake anyone. 

Moving now as quickly as she dared, she went down the stairs, dodging the floorboards she knew creaked and keeping an ear out for what room her mother had gone into. She found her answer in the front room, where she heard heavy breathing before a muffled _crash_ rattled near the front window. 

“Mama?” She cried out, worried. Her mother was on her knees at the windowsill, looking out with a frightened expression on her face. “Mama, what’s wrong?” All thoughts of the carousel had fled from her mind. As though lifted from a spell by the sound of her daughter’s voice, her mother looked up, and her face evened out. No more fear. 

“Samantha, what are you doing up?” She scolded, but it sounded perfunctory, like she had her mind on other things. Ignoring the rebuke, Samantha pressed her face to the window, and finally saw what had made the sound. There had been a flower box hooked there, where her mother cultivated roses. The box had fallen off the sill, terracotta smashed into shards with the flowers mixed up in the dirt underneath it all.

She could not say why, but the sight was a shocking thing. More shocking than the sound of it falling had been. Her eyes were wide, wide enough they felt dry and uncomfortable. 

“Mama, we can get a new box,” she said, but her own voice sounded frightened and childish. “The flowers are still okay.”

“No, Samantha,” her mother shook her head. “Look closer, look out the window at it.” Samantha did as she was told, lifted the window pane and leaned as far as she could out the window. The flowers were not okay. As though only waiting for them to hit the ground, maggots, beetles, and other insects Samantha couldn’t name had rooted up out of the dirt and already chewed holes through the petals, leaves, and stems. She recoiled, jerked back and slammed the window shut. 

“How did that happen?” She whispered, hand over her throat. Her mother pursed her lips as though to answer, but hesitated on the words. “Mama, I just remembered something,” she went on, turned away from the window and everything in the room, thinking back to earlier that night. “I dreamed this, I dreamed of it happening!” 

“Of the flowers falling?” the older woman asked. 

“Yes,” Samantha cried. “But, no! This exact thing, the flowers being eaten. It's going to happen to me!” Tears leaked out of her eyes, she felt her own lips wrenched in a grimace. Her face felt hot, surely all red. Her mother seemed to have forgotten the flowers entirely, only watching Samantha with a twisted up, worried expression. 

“They’re only flowers, Sammy,” she said placatingly. Samantha cried harder. It felt like something in her was shaking, she was terribly afraid. The dream existed only in vague impressions, but something she loved very much would be taken, chewed away until there was nothing left at all. She didn’t know how to explain this to her mother. 

“They’re not! They’re important!” She wailed. Everything seemed to be spiraling away from her. 

“Nothing will happen to you,” her mother promised. She looked serious. She had been upset by the flowers too, that awful face she’d been making was burned into Samantha’s memory. She was putting that aside now to comfort Samantha, to be strong. Samantha wanted to be able to do that. But digging into her heart, she could only find fear. A heaviness for what she knew was to come.

“Not me,” she answered. “Not _me,_ ” it felt crucial that she say so. If she could only figure out _who_ was in danger, perhaps she could explain it to her mother. 

A hand came down on her shoulder, she jumped before she realized it was her father. Her mother looked relieved at having him there with her.

“I heard noise,” he explained. “What’s going on?” He has a tension about him, Samantha thought he’d probably heard the things she’d been saying. Still, he was gentle in the way he wiped her tears away with a thumb. 

“Something terrible is going to happen,” she whispered, tears clogging her throat. Her father’s expression turned flat and serious, he locked eyes with her mother. He always took her at her word, at her intuition. But he couldn’t help with this, even if Samantha could explain more of it. It seemed hopeless. 

She swallowed, took deep breaths that didn’t make her feel calm, but made calm easier to pretend at. Her parents didn’t stop looking worried, but they looked a little soothed. 

“Are you feeling alright, Sammy?” Her mother ventured, and her father seemed to grasp onto the spirit of the question.

“Maybe you’re a little overtired,” he suggested. “You had a big day, after all. It's late.” She thought back to the day. Her date with Miguel seemed trivial now, though it was nice to think of. She nodded.

“Yeah. I need to sleep,” she shuffled her feet a little, her father leaned back again. “I’ll be okay.” The lie didn’t taste good on her tongue, but it was entirely different from the chalky taste from earlier. Appearing consoled enough for her parents’ peace of mind, she hugged them both and went back up the stairs. 

Just inside the door of her bedroom, against the wall farthest from her bed, the music carousel still sat. Her stomach turned a little. She’d forgotten to ask about it at all. 

She picked the thing up again, slipped back into the hall and through the bathroom door. She leaned down and stuffed the carousel into the cabinet, under the sink and behind the pipe in the shadowed recesses of the countertop. She didn’t want to see it anymore. The bathroom wasn’t far, but she determined that as long as it was outside her bedroom door, and not inside with her, things would be okay. 


End file.
